Publications – How We Fight, 1776-2006

The military we have today is radically different from what America had for the first two centuries of the Republic. How we got from the Minutemen to Seal Team Six is the subject of a story I wrote for National Journal‘s Independence Day 2006 issue, entitled “How We Fight. It begins:

In addition, since the NJ‘s website only includes the text of the story, I have their permission to reproduce here the extraordinary graphic timeline of America’s wars produced by my longtime collaborator Ryan Morris, who updated it this November for my Veterans’ Day lecture at Dartmouth:

(click on the miniature version above for the full-size graphic, then click again to magnify)

While this story is not based on interviews with veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, I believe it provides invaluable historical context for understanding our current wars and how we fight them.